(Close Window) Topic: Best Magic Effect (Trick) You Saw as a Kid
Message: Posted by: F J (Jun 25, 2010 10:27am)
I just thought I'd see what some of the most amazing magic effects (tricks) that you saw as a kid. I think it would be neat to see what amazed some now-magicians when they were younger.

I'll go first:

When I was 10 or so, my family went on a vacation to Hawai'i. I went to see some magic show there, and the magician did some escape thing.
There was a huge platform at the top with lots of spikes, and the magician was strapped in the bottom and chained, etc.

It was covered with a cloth, and you could see his shadow as he was struggling to escape. The spikes were on a timer, and when the timer ran out, they fell straight down to impale him and -- he wasn't there! He popped up in the back of the theatre, in the middle of the audience.

I still don't know how he did it, because I'm know expert on escapes . . .

Your turn. Tell your story of what the best magic was that you saw as a kid.
Message: Posted by: Zainan (Jun 30, 2010 1:00am)
This is an easy question. I can definitely remember the first REAL magic I ever saw. I was in the fourth grade and we had a magician come to the school. The only trick I remember him doing was the box where he rams the two blades in, then separates the the middle section out. One of the girls in my class was the "helpless victim". After the show I asked Amy how he done it and she refused to tell. It is now 30 years later and Amy is my son's kindergarten teacher. I learned the secret to that trick a few months ago. Amy doesn't know I am a magician so I asked her again how he did the trick. To her credit, she still refuses to tell. :)
Message: Posted by: powerwords (Jun 30, 2010 12:38pm)
The first time I saw magic was also the reason why I chose to be a magician.

One day, I went to a birthday party of a friend. I was a 6th grader. There was a magician performing. One of the most famous actually, MR. Robbin (passed away just a few months ago). I watched him performing one trick to another until I saw him doing The Dancing Cane. It was really beautiful.....

So on the way home, I told my mum that I wanted a magician to perform on my birthday. She just said no, we couldn't afford it. I was really sad.

Every single day I sat in front of the TV waiting for MR. Robbin to perform on his 30 minutes magic show.

One time when I was watching the magic show on TV with my Grandpa, he asked me why I like magic. And I just said "because magicians do impossible things"

On My Birthday, instead of hiring a magician for the party, my mother and my grandpa signed me up to MR. Robbin's magic school. :D
And of course I got to learn the Dancing Cane from the master himself.

That was the best time ever
Message: Posted by: rhiro (Nov 19, 2010 8:44pm)
I have an old memory of visiting the Magic Castle for the first time around 1980 or so when I was a kid. I recall having a good time and seeing a lot of magic, but the guy who impressed me the most was a close-up magician. I remember him doing what I now recognize as a coin matrix, and a really funny routine with a cigarette. I remember him making the cigarette vanish up his nose and pulling it out of his mouth. At one point I recall the cigarette mysteriously vanishing, and he’d ask us if we knew where the cigarette went. He’d smile and a small amount of smoke would come out of his mouth. I thought it was the most magical and funny thing my young eyes had ever seen. After the show, I remember seeing this magician doing this same trick in the bar to a small crowd, and the group was laughing and having a great time. I thought he was the coolest magician I had ever seen.

I never learned this magician’s name. I remember thinking he looked a bit like Dennis Quaid, in my eyes anyway. I was new to magic at the time, still in the slum magic mode, so this whole world was new to me. Unfortunately, it would not be until a couple of decades later that I would get more serious with magic and start to learn many of the faces in the magic world. My memory from back then is fuzzy, but I’ve been wondering: Could this have been Whit Hayden?

Thanks,

Ross
Message: Posted by: Mr. Mystoffelees (Nov 22, 2010 9:11am)
My uncle, every payday, would walk down the street and turn into a bar...
Message: Posted by: ringmaster (Dec 1, 2010 10:18pm)
Socar's buzz saw on a Ernie Kovac special around 1958.
Message: Posted by: Donal Chayce (Dec 2, 2010 8:17pm)
I still vividly recall seeing Milo and Roger (or M&R clones) performing the Temple of Benares live on the main stage at the Arizona State Fair sometime in the early-to-mid-'60s.

It blew my pre-pubescent mind.
Message: Posted by: Brent McLeod (Dec 3, 2010 3:23am)
Sat mesmerised in the 70s as Legendary Richard Ross performed
the Linking Rings routine

Was done so slowly & effortless, Pure Magic linking & Unlinking..........
Even now over 30 yrs later I recall the thrill in me as I watched.....
Message: Posted by: ugdini13 (Dec 15, 2010 4:37pm)
Jeff McBride was performing at Ceasar's Lake Tahoe resort in 1989. He brought me on stage to assist him with the Miser's Dream routine.
Message: Posted by: panlives (Dec 16, 2010 7:18am)
I was 11 or 12 years old.

Walked into Morrissey’s during a vacation stay with my Aunt and Uncle in Toronto.

Herb Morrissey caught me with his gaze and did a French Drop. I saw a little red ball vanish in the hands of a real Magician.

It was perfect. It was magic.

Quote:

On 2010-12-15 16:37, ugdini13 wrote:
Jeff McBride was performing at Ceasar's Lake Tahoe resort in 1989. He brought me on stage to assist him with the Miser's Dream routine.

Now this is a story that requires a bit more colour commentary!
Message: Posted by: rhiro (Feb 15, 2011 2:43pm)
Quote:

On 2010-11-19 20:44, rhiro wrote:
I have an old memory of visiting the Magic Castle for the first time around 1980 or so when I was a kid. I recall having a good time and seeing a lot of magic, but the guy who impressed me the most was a close-up magician. I remember him doing what I now recognize as a coin matrix, and a really funny routine with a cigarette. I remember him making the cigarette vanish up his nose and pulling it out of his mouth. At one point I recall the cigarette mysteriously vanishing, and he’d ask us if we knew where the cigarette went. He’d smile and a small amount of smoke would come out of his mouth. I thought it was the most magical and funny thing my young eyes had ever seen. After the show, I remember seeing this magician doing this same trick in the bar to a small crowd, and the group was laughing and having a great time. I thought he was the coolest magician I had ever seen.

I never learned this magician’s name. I remember thinking he looked a bit like Dennis Quaid, in my eyes anyway. I was new to magic at the time, still in the slum magic mode, so this whole world was new to me. Unfortunately, it would not be until a couple of decades later that I would get more serious with magic and start to learn many of the faces in the magic world. My memory from back then is fuzzy, but I’ve been wondering: Could this have been Whit Hayden?

Thanks,

Ross


Mystery solved! I saw Whit "Pop" Haydn (sorry for the earlier misspelling) perform at the Magic Castle this past Saturday. I chatted with him after his show, told him my story, and he said, "Yes, that was me!" Cool!

Ross
Message: Posted by: michaelmystic2003 (Feb 17, 2011 5:00pm)
I also got bewildered as a child by the french drop... a restaurant magician who I still know today came up to little me in a restaurant as I was walking around exploring, and showed a large blue rubber ball. And I swear, he just dumped it into my hand and it dematerialized. It was an amazing feeling. The one thing I miss about not being a magician is that we rarely experience those moments of wonder anymore... and if we do, they are NEVER going to be to the same degree as a layperson.
Message: Posted by: southernsorcerer (Feb 23, 2011 6:03pm)
Three tricks have stuck in my memory. The earliest trick I can remember seeing live was the die box being performed in a magic show at my school. A year or 2 later I met a magaician who pushed a hankerchief in his hand and made it vanish. It was amazing to a 10 year old who had never seen magic done so close up before and was one of the things that made me want to do magic myself. The one that most impressed me as a child was seeing Paul Daniels do the Lemon, Egg and Walnut trick when I saw his show in London. It must have been 20 years before I finally found out how he did it.
Message: Posted by: paullong (Apr 15, 2011 10:27am)
Paul Daniels magic kettle for me. Unfathomable at the time (and now actually!) and I LOVED the idea of a kettl which could provide whatever drink I wanted, whenever I wanted it.
Message: Posted by: ringmaster (May 14, 2011 1:16pm)
For live magic,I got to see harry Blackstone Sr. and Ormand McGill every year in the 1950's. The agic portion, the first half, of the McGill show blew Blackstone out of the water. The biggest Illusion was the sub trunk, packing case, which was done as a psychic effect, not a substitution or escape. There was also a masterful linking ring routine that was actually entreating . Everything flowed together, and was emitted class and mystery. The second half of the program, the hypnotism show went right over my head and left me cold.
Now what trick most impressed me most, Harry Blackstone doing a single card change for me, backstage.
Message: Posted by: Pakar Ilusi (Jul 19, 2011 10:13pm)
Quote:

On 2010-11-22 09:11, Mr. Mystoffelees wrote:
My uncle, every payday, would walk down the street and turn into a bar...


:rotf: Good one!


Back on topic, it was the Copperfield Specials for me...

That WAS Magic! ;)
Message: Posted by: charliecheckers (Aug 9, 2011 11:14am)
I always loved David Copperfield's Death Saw... I saw it live a couple times and just loved it.
Message: Posted by: Ms. Merizing (Aug 14, 2011 11:20am)
Was fortunate as a child to see quite a number of quality magic acts in professional settings.

At age 9, hadn't seen any performer actually appear to have fun with magic until I saw Carl Ballantine aka The Great Ballantine. He impressed me with his strikingly original & funny act. One of the great entertainers whose magic effects never came to fruition, but always realized a grateful audience.
Message: Posted by: MobilityBundle (Nov 14, 2011 4:50am)
For me, the first hook was seeing my friend back palm a card.

I had seen magic tricks before, but never anything so visual.

A few years later, I saw (on television) Ricky Jay and his 52 Assistants. At that point I knew a little bit about magic, but it was one of the most amazing things I had ever seen. Not just the mechanics, but the presentation. It was so much different than any magic I had ever seen on TV or in person before then. That really sparked my interest.
Message: Posted by: Josh Chaikin (Nov 14, 2011 5:27am)
When I was six, I went to see a show with my parents and some friends at the Officer's Club in Ft. Gordon, GA. I was called onstage to assist the magician, and he had a bag full of stamps and an empty album. He told me the magic words to say, which I fumbled (to huge laughs, of course), so he gave me simplier ones (hocus pocus), and then the stamps disappeared from the bag and appeared inside of the album. It completely blew my mind, because I was the one that made the magic happen. That really had a profound effect on me.
Message: Posted by: REV BILL (Dec 30, 2011 10:04pm)
At a school assembly in 4th grade 1964, the Metamorpho Spot Can blew me away.
Message: Posted by: Bondy (Jan 30, 2012 11:06pm)
I was at my freinds birthday party and there was a clown who did the classic balloon swallowing trick,don't remember anything else he did.
Message: Posted by: Father Photius (Jan 30, 2012 11:57pm)
Hard for me to say, since I was party to having Harry Blackstone,Sr. do private performances for me. The first one that impressed me was Mark Wilson doing an arabian tent exchange with Nani on the old Time for Magic Show. Next would have been the first time Uncle Harry made that birdcage disappear out of my hands.
Message: Posted by: DWRackley (Feb 11, 2012 12:21am)
Every year, The Amazing Elmer would perform at an elementary school assembly. Every year, he did exactly the same show. And every year we loved it.

He had this big shiny silver bucket, and every time he would reach into the air, a coin would appear at his fingertips, which he would drop into that shiny silver bucket. He pulled coins out of kid’s ears, out from under their armpits, one of the kids blew his nose into the magician’s handkerchief, and a stream of coins fell out.

Of course, everyone here knows “The Miser’s Dream”, but for weeks after The Amazing Elmer show, we were sticking coins into our ears and noses…”Hey, watch this!"
Message: Posted by: Michael Baker (Feb 11, 2012 7:42pm)
Quote:

On 2012-02-11 00:21, DWRackley wrote:
Every year, The Amazing Elmer would perform at an elementary school assembly. Every year, he did exactly the same show. And every year we loved it.

He had this big shiny silver bucket, and every time he would reach into the air, a coin would appear at his fingertips, which he would drop into that shiny silver bucket. He pulled coins out of kid’s ears, out from under their armpits, one of the kids blew his nose into the magician’s handkerchief, and a stream of coins fell out.

Of course, everyone here knows “The Miser’s Dream”, but for weeks after The Amazing Elmer show, we were sticking coins into our ears and noses…”Hey, watch this!"


Is Choo-choo town Chattanooga? If so, you may have been close enough to have seen the late Elmer Newman, a.k.a. Newdini. He was from Decatur, AL, not that far of a drive from SE Tennessee. http://archive.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/livingtoday/070723/magic.shtml
Message: Posted by: DWRackley (Feb 12, 2012 7:11am)
Yes, I don’t think we ever “outgrew” that song. :)

I didn’t know Newdini, but Paul Smith (“The Amazing Elmer”) was mentioned in that article. I appreciate seeing it.

Paul was one of the oldest members of Ring 112, which bills itself as one of the oldest continually active magic clubs that is associated with the International Brotherhood of Magicians. He was one of my first critics (and teachers) when I got into performing for myself. Very special man.

Thanks for that link, Michael!
Message: Posted by: Bugatti (Mar 17, 2012 8:29am)
My father, who really isn´t into magic, was showing me the one trick he knew when I was a young boy: He was covering a cup with a newspaper and apparently smashed the covered cup through the table - you know the effect I am talking about. That really fooled me. At the age of eight or nine I saw a a magician at a fleamarket performing with a Svengali, which he was selling of course - I was fascinated (they are not as well known to the German public, as they are in the US...) and of course I had to get one. The thing that impressed me most on television was David Copperfield´s flight with a lady from the audience - I loved it and had no explanation at all.
Message: Posted by: Turpoint (Mar 30, 2012 2:43pm)
My uncle did a trick where he vanished a coin, just by lapping. And BAM! I was passioned by magic :)
Message: Posted by: eatonmagic (Apr 11, 2012 8:01am)
I used to watch the Copperfield specials (presented by Clorox....Dang that's good marketing if people still remember that) but the real trick that changed my life was Cigarette thru quarter.

I moved to Ocala, FL with my father in 1989 and we used to frequent a bar/seafood restaurant and a guy named Joe used to hang out there. Apparently he was an amateur magician and used to bring stuff with him all the time. The tricks that had me absolutely hooked though was the cigarette thru quarter.

After that it was only a short time before I was in my local library checking out everything in the 792.8 section ; ). I check out Bob Friedhoffers book of magic and in the back was a list of magic dealers. I saw Hank Lees name and ordered my free catalogue. Hat thing was my bible for 2 years! I LOVED sitting anywhere I went and reading the descriptions of all the effects! I ordered 5'll get ya 10 and from that point on I knew exactly what I wanted for a living. I can say now, looking back those gentlemen changed my life forever without realizing it. This is why I always take a moment or two to pay it forward and spend a few minutes with a kid at each performance and show them something they can do for their friends.
Message: Posted by: Dennis (May 5, 2012 2:53am)
Wonderama...
Slydini doing the one coin routine!
Real magic to my young eyes.
Message: Posted by: bertietonks (May 17, 2012 5:37pm)
At a wedding the brides dad who as a pilot performed floating bill and rising card. The most amazing mindbending and magical thing I have ever seen even to this date. I remember thinking one day I am going to learn magic and so the journey began. I wish I could find him and say a great big thank you for giving me so much even though he will be totally oblivious to this point. :).
Message: Posted by: Dr. Delusion (May 17, 2012 8:35pm)
It must of been over 40 years ago. Safeway stores used to bring a clown from California here to Eugene once a year. He would perform at a few local grade schoools in the mornings and then later in the day he would be at one of the local Safeway stores and give kids rides in his mini model A Ford. I remember him perform " Miracles " with a change bag. A few years back I was lucky enough to come across a old wacky washer of his at one of Stan Kramiens Jamborees. He went by the name of ZeeZo the clown.
Bob.
Message: Posted by: Atom3339 (May 26, 2012 11:54am)
Years ago, Coins Across, Mickey Hades, Seattle Pike Street Market. Astonishing.
Message: Posted by: Futureal (May 26, 2012 9:06pm)
I saw Blackstone Senior do the floating lightbulb on tour. Great effect.